Oh yeah, I almost forgot, because all of my boys refuse to answer their cellphones, I got the unlimited texting plan, so that I can text the boys.

  1 using System;

  2 using System.Collections.Generic;

  3 using System.ComponentModel;

  4 using System.Data;

  5 using System.Drawing;

  6 using System.Text;

  7 using System.Windows.Forms;

  8 using System.Net;

  9 using System.Net.Sockets;

 10 using System.Threading;

 11 

 12 namespace MultiCastChat

 13 {

 14     public partial class formMain : Form

 15     {

 16         private const int TIME_TO_LIVE = 50;

 17         private UdpClient client = null;

 18         private IPAddress group = null;

 19         private int port = 0;

 20         private IPEndPoint multiCastEP = null;

 21 

 22         private bool stayAlive = true;

 23         private Thread receiveThread = null;

 24         private string defaultNameText = "";

 25 

 26         public delegate void dListOngoing(string message);

 27         public dListOngoing listOngoing;

 28 

 29         public formMain()

 30         {

 31             InitializeComponent();

 32         }

 33 

 34         private void formMain_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)

 35         {

 36             comboAddress.SelectedIndex = 0;

 37             defaultNameText = textboxName.Text;

 38             this.AcceptButton = buttonJoin;

 39             this.CancelButton = buttonExit;

 40             this.buttonJoin.Enabled = true;

 41             this.buttonExit.Enabled = true;

 42             this.buttonSend.Enabled = true;

 43             this.textboxPort.Text = "" + 10002;

 44             textboxInput.Focus();

 45             listOngoing = new dListOngoing(displayMessage);

 46         }

 47 

 48         private void buttonSend_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

 49         {

 50             this.SendMessage(textboxInput.Text);

 51         }

 52 

 53         private void buttonEnd_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

 54         {

 55             this.LeaveGroup();

 56 

 57             buttonJoin.Enabled = true;

 58             buttonEnd.Enabled = false;

 59             buttonSend.Enabled = false;

 60             this.AcceptButton = buttonJoin;

 61             this.CancelButton = buttonExit;

 62         }

 63 

 64         private void SendMessage(String message)

 65         {

 66             Byte[] buff;

 67 

 68             buff = Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(textboxName.Text + ": " + message);

 69             client.Send(buff, buff.Length, multiCastEP);

 70             textboxInput.Text = "";

 71         }

 72 

 73         private void LeaveGroup()

 74         {

 75             if (group != null)

 76             {

 77                 SendMessage("Leaving Chat");

 78                 Application.DoEvents();

 79                 Thread.Sleep(500);

 80                 stayAlive = false;

 81                 while (receiveThread.IsAlive) Application.DoEvents();

 82                 receiveThread.Join();

 83                 client.DropMulticastGroup(group);

 84                 client.Close();

 85                 client = null;

 86                 group = null;

 87                 multiCastEP = null;

 88             }

 89         }

 90 

 91         private void JoinGroup()

 92         {

 93             if (!int.TryParse(textboxPort.Text, out port))

 94                 throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Port Number");

 95             if (!IPAddress.TryParse(comboAddress.Text, out group))

 96                 throw new ApplicationException("Invalid Multicast Group Address");

 97 

 98             client = new UdpClient(port);

 99             client.JoinMulticastGroup(group, TIME_TO_LIVE);

100             multiCastEP = new IPEndPoint(group, port);

101 

102             this.stayAlive = true;

103             receiveThread = new Thread(this.runThread);

104             receiveThread.Start();

105 

106             this.SendMessage("has joined the chat!");

107             this.AcceptButton = buttonSend;

108             this.CancelButton = buttonEnd;

109             this.buttonJoin.Enabled = false;

110             this.buttonEnd.Enabled = true;

111             this.buttonSend.Enabled = true;

112             textboxInput.Focus();

113         }

114 

115         private void runThread()

116         {

117             Byte[] buff;

118             String message;

119             while (stayAlive)

120             {

121                 IPEndPoint ep = null;

122                 if (client.Available > 0)

123                 {

124                     buff = client.Receive(ref ep);

125                     message = Encoding.ASCII.GetString(buff);

126                     this.Invoke(this.listOngoing, message);

127                 }

128                 else

129                 {

130                     Thread.Sleep(10);

131                 }

132             }

133         }

134 

135         private void buttonExit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

136         {

137             this.LeaveGroup();

138             buttonJoin.Enabled = true;

139             buttonEnd.Enabled = false;

140             buttonSend.Enabled = false;

141             this.AcceptButton = buttonJoin;

142             this.CancelButton = buttonExit;

143             this.Close();

144         }

145 

146         public void displayMessage(string message)

147         {

148             lstOngoing.Items.Add(message);

149             lstOngoing.Refresh();

150         }

151 

152         private void buttonJoin_Click(object sender, EventArgs e)

153         {

154             this.JoinGroup();

155         }

156     }

157 }

Here is a screen shot of my application connected to another member of the class.

First of I commented out all of the normal filter lines and replaced them with this

<!–[if IE]>
<style>
.top-content {
background-image: none;
/*filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”/img/content-top.png”, sizingMethod=”scale”);*/
}
.logo {
background-image: none;
/*filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”/img/scera-logo.png”, sizingMethod=”scale”);*/
}
.mdle-content {
background-image: none;
/*filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”/img/content-bg.png”, sizingMethod=”scale”);*/
}
.btm-content {
background-image: none;
/*filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”/img/content-btm.png”, sizingMethod=”scale”);*/
}
.side-nav-bg {
background-image: none;
/*filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”/img/side-nav-bg.png”, sizingMethod=”scale”);*/
}
.tickets {
background-image: none;
/*filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=”/img/tickets.png”, sizingMethod=”scale”);*/
}

</style>
<![endif]–>

Once I had done that, I wrote a pre-loader and called it in the <body onload=”genesis()”> of the website. The following is the code from the pre-loader:

<script type=”text/javascript”>
function vIE(){return (navigator.appName==’Microsoft Internet Explorer’)?parseFloat((new RegExp(“MSIE ([0-9]{1,}[.0-9]{0,})”)).exec(navigator.userAgent)[1]):-1;}

function genesis() {
if (vIE() < 7 && vIE() > 0) {
var divs = document.getElementsByTagName(‘img’);
for (i = 0; i < divs.length; i++) {
var im = new Image;
im.src = divs[i].src;
}
document.getElementById(‘top-content’).style.filter = “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=’/img/content-top.png’, sizingMethod=’scale’
)”;
document.getElementById(‘logo’).style.filter = “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=’/img/scera-logo.png’, sizingMethod=’scale’)
“;
document.getElementById(‘mdle-content’).style.filter = “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=’/img/content-bg.png’, sizingMethod=’scale’
)”;
document.getElementById(‘btm-content’).style.filter = “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=’/img/content-btm.png’, sizingMethod=’scale’
)”;
document.getElementById(’side-nav-bg’).style.filter = “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=’/img/side-nav-bg.png’, sizingMethod=’scale’
)”;
document.getElementById(‘tickets’).style.filter = “progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader(src=’/img/tickets.png’, sizingMethod=’scale’)”;
}
}

</script>

It isn’t the cleanest solution in the world, but it works (even if it is a little slow) granted, we ended up deciding that this solution was not the right one (needed to be faster when loading) so we changed it around a little, and now IE 6 uses get gifs rather than pngs.

I had previously decided to purchase some servers (rather than use dedicated servers spread around the nation) and move into a local data center. Since I work for a company that provides web hosting and other data center services, (such as colocation, which is what I needed) I got some rack space in the Fibernet & Nethosting data center and ordered my servers.

The servers have finally started to come in and I am slowly setting them up and moving them into the data center. I am planning on sharing all of my wo’s involved in migrating all of my servers and I am also planning on sharing my solutions to the problems

Return often to find out about my trials and solutions.

Although this frame work provides a ton of flexibility and power over the database associations and the layout of the site, I quickly discovered a large number of things that are either incredibly difficult to do, or that are impossible to do. The sad thing about this, is that these are basic database types of things that I ran into. I could understand if it were something very complex that no one does, but it is stuff that is an everyday kind of thing to do. Let me put forth an example:

Here is a very basic database to use with our example.

Videos
--------
id as int(11)
name as varchar(255)
icon as varchar(255)
path as varchar(255)
user_id as int(11)

Users
-------
id as int(11)
first_name as varchar(255)
last_name as varchar(255)
username as varchar(32)
password as varchar(32)
company_id as int(11)

Companies
--------------
id as int(11)
name as varchar(255)
description as text

As you can see, we have a very basic example that consists of Videos that are attached to users. Users are then attached to a company. I simply wanted to use cake to read in each video and use the model association of belongsTo to attach both a company and a user. (This is because each video only has one user, and each user only has one company.) This should be easy in CakePHP right? Wrong!

After beating myself in the head for hours trying to figure out how to get the company to attach properly, I decided to dig into the code of CakePHP itself. I quickly discovered that the framework is there to allow for this type of thing, is simply doesn’t work. After a few minutes of hacking on the core CakePHP sources, I was able to devise a solution. My solution even though it is not graceful, works.

The worst part of my experience was not running into this issue though. The thing that drove me nuts was that I tried to talk to the developers in the IRC channel for CakePHP and was quickly snubbed by the developers after trying to get them to give me an answer on how to get this to work properly I was banned from the channel. WOW. Way to go open source community. Want to know why the corporate world will never take you serious? It is because you can’t handle constructive criticism.

Anyway, overall I really do like CakePHP, but there is an issue here that simply drives me nuts. HELP OUT YOUR USERS!